Wormholing Part 3 – Anomalies, Scanning guide and Directional Scan

Welcome to Part 3 of my wormhole guide. This is probably going to be the longest one yet. Buckle up.

The skills shown in this guide will benefit you outside of wormhole space. Scanning & Direction Scan are key tools to normal EVE play – particularly for those who hunt others. Anomalies exist in all areas of space, but Wormhole Anomalies contain Sleepers, who practically deserve a guide of their own.

We’ll be covering Anomalies, the basics of Scanning and how to use D-Scan for hunting.

Anomalies

Anomalies are the source of a lot of people’s fun in w-space. Kill sleepers in them for ISK or kill players in them for explosions. There’s not much to them. Anomalies always show on a system scan, probes or no. This means any player can find them with ease. Anomalies in w-space are straight up sleeper sites. No hacking or mining, just waves of Sleepers. The difficulty depends on the class of wormhole – C1 anomalies are easy. C6 anomalies are really hard. There isn’t anything special about anomalies, but there are things to bear in mind.

You do not get bounty or an ISK reward for anomalies. The ISK comes from the loot and salvage (which is worth billions in the higher end sites). You still need to get this loot out of w-space to sell it!

Anomalies despawn either 3 days after being warped to for the first time, or after completion. Any uncompleted sleeper waves will respawn at next downtime.

Anomaly (and site) spawns are random. You may find 5 more in your home wormhole one morning or none at all.

Warping capital ships in in C5 and C6 sites cause additional Sleeper Battleships to spawn, massively increasing the risk but also the reward. Up to 4 extra waves spawn – one for the first 2 Carriers and one for the first 2 Dreadnaughts. These waves will kill capitals that are unprepared. These waves fully respawn at downtime if the site remains uncompleted.

Sleeper AI will switch targets, It will neut. It will scram and web. It is dangerous.

Sleepers will remote rep on occasion. Watch out for this!

This website lists all the anomaly (and site) types at the bottom of the page – good for examining what each site contains in terms of sleepers.

Sites

In w-space, there are technically 6 types of sites. We have Combat Anomalies and Ore sites which do not require probes. We then have Data, Relic, Gas and Unknown signatures.

Combat Anomalies – The main anomalies for fighting sleepers. A few waves and a fair bit of salvage/loot

Ore Sites (previously Gravimetric Sites) – Anomalies which contain large asteroid belts – sleepers may spawn in them, but usually in relatively small numbers

Data Sites (previously Radar Sites) – Signatures with a fair number of sleepers and hacking sites – you need a Data Analyzer to hack the sites which can reveal more loot in addition to the sleeper loot

Each site varies in terms of ore/hacking/sleepers depending on the class of wormhole and the actual site type. Again, this site is a good guide.

Scanning

Scanning is the act of using Scan Probes to locate a target. The target can be a ship, NPC site, structure or drone. In addition, there’s two types of NPC sites – “Anomalies” and “Sites”. The main difference here is that Anomalies do not need scan probes to find. More on the differences between these later.

To access the scanning tool, you need to click this button on your display.

Alternatively, “Alt-D” is the default key combination. You should see something like this.

If you never train probe skills or launch probes, this will be all you ever see. The system scanner automatically shows all probably sites a 0% strength as well as all the anomalies in system, Remember I mentioned you don’t need probes to see anomalies? Any ship, with or without probes, can see a list which could look like this:

An example of an Anomaly list

Any ship can get these results, so that’s important to bear in mind. As you can see, you can toggle off these 100% hits with “show anomalies” above the result window.

In order to scan anything else (such as a wormhole), we need scan probes. There’s two types of scan probes, with several types of probe launcher.

Probes

Core Probes – Can only be used to find Anomalies & Sites. Can scan between a distance of 0.25 AU and 32 AU. Can be fit in any Probe Launcher.

Combat Probes – Can be used to find Anomalies, Sites, Ships, Drones and Structures. Can scan between 0.50 AU and 64 AU. Needs an Expanded Probe Launcher.

In addition, there are “Sister” variants of each probe type. More expensive, the Sister variants provide a bigger scan bonus.

Finally, there are ships which confer bonuses to scanning (and have the high CPU to fit the Expanded Launcher).

There are Tech 1 Frigates which give a basic 5% bonus per frigate level to Scan Strength and there are Tech 2 Frigates which give 10% bonus to Scan Strength, as well as allowing you to fit the Covert Ops Cloak, allowing you to warp cloaked. There’s also Tech 3 Cruisers that can fit Scan Probe Launchers if they have the relevant subsystems.

—-

Probing – launching probes and basic formations

Now, onto probing, Every ship can launch up to 8 probes at once. Simply clicking the probe launcher in space will launch all 8 into the default formation which looks like this.

These are the probes in the default system-wide configuration the game gives us. The bubbles are each probe and the central box with arrows lets us move them around.

This probe formation is good to do a system wide scan for ships or structures, but useless for pinpointing the actual signatures. Probes need at least 3 overlapping signals to get a 3d position of the target. The more the better. None of the probes overlap, meaning there is no way for us to get a good hit on the target. The larger the probe scan range, the less accurate the results. As such, probing is a case of locating a target then narrowing it down scan by scan. Let’s give it a try.

As I said, this formation is useless so I swap to the other default formation.

Okay, much better. All the probes now overlap. Now we can move the probes where we want to start our first scan. Remember untill you actually hit scan, the probes never move. They’re still around my ship!

Moving probes

The central box lets us move all 8 probes. Clicking and dragging the arrows moves it round the system as we desire. To resize the probes, we can click and drag on the edge of any probe’s bubble. The game will automatically move the other bubbles to compensate, keeping all the probes in the correct formation. That means that within this default formation, all the probes will stay overlapping regardless of how big or small I make the scan sizes!

To move the system map, left click to rotate your view and right click to pan. Zoom with mouse wheel. Double click on a probe in the list to center on it.

Remember, the smaller the probe the more accurate the results!

Probing the signatures

Okay, we have the probes where we want. Hitting scan moves the probes and starts the actual scan process. We need 100% on a target to warp to it. You want a general scan first to get the rough locations of signatures. Let’s give it a try!

That is a fair few signatures! Most are within 3 probes so we get a red dot as to the rough location. The circle is a signature within 2 probe ranges, so we can only get a 2d representation on where it is! However we still do not know what the signatures are – we must get a 25% hit to determine the signature type – Gas, Relic, Wormhole or Data.

We have one at 16.9% so let’s go for that. Clicking the signature result shows only it on the in-game map. Re-center your probes on the signature and reduce them a size before your next scan. The second scan gives us;

Ah, interesting. The other signatures are going berserk as we move away from them but the signature we want is now above 25%. We can see it is a Gas Site. If we were not interested in Gas sites, we could ignore it and move on. We want to find it though, so we best continue. It has also moved slightly as our results get more accurate. Move probes again and drop a size.

Better, but still not 100%. Best try again! Move probes, drop a size.

Bingo. We have it to 100%, revealing the exact site and letting us warp to it. We can now also bookmark it by right-clicking the result if we want to warp in later. If we want to keep scanning, we can right-click it to “ignore” it, and go back to step 1.

So to recap;

Launch probes

Setup initial formation. Beginners should absolutely use the second default formation! Heck, it works fine for advanced users too!

Do initial scan. Pick a signature to focus on. Move probes closer to the signature and drop down a probe size.

Scan again. Move closer to the signature and drop down a probe size

Repeat till signature is found

Victory.

These are the basics of moving probes. Time for some more advance tips;

Holding shift brings up the move box for each individual probes, letting you maneuver probes into whatever formation you desire.

Every site type has a “Sig Size” – the higher the size, the easier it is to scan. Sites go from 2.25 to 10.

Wormhole Statics have a set size. Use this to get a good idea of the type of wormhole you are scanning – you can view these on the many wormhole websites like http://wormhol.es

I am more than happy to answer specific queries about probing. Feel free to ask me.

Directional Scan

Directional scan is a wormholer’s best friend. It can tell you if you’re being hunted. It can tell you where your prey is. It tells you where a POS is, what the defenses are and if it’s even online.

The D-Scan is in the probe window at the top, and looks like this.

It’s empty, but we have not scanned yet. There’s 4 important sections we need to know about first.

The “Use Active Overview Settings” box adjusts your result window to show only what your overview would show. If this box is ticked, and you have your overview to filter out planets, then planets do not appear when scanning. Easy.

Tracking – if you are not in the system map (i.e. you can see your ship) then your camera will pan in the direction of whatever you’ve selected in-game. This means if you click a station, your view will center on the station from your ship. This leads onto the next point

Angle. From 5° to 360°. Basically only show what is in a certain angle of your camera. So if you have 360°, it will show everything within 360°. If you have 90°, it will show you everything within 90° of your camera direction. This means if you have a distant station selected and tracking (AKA it’s in the center of your view) and you set your d-scan to 5° it will pretty much just tell you what’s at or near the station. See how this can be useful?

Range – the range of the scan in Kilometers. Range is limited to 2,147,483,647 km, or about 14.35 AU. Ties in well with the angle to determine threats.

We can scan roughly every 4-5 seconds. The scans are instant. The opportunities are endless. We can do a full range 360° scan to determine if there are towers in a wormhole, or ships in an anomaly. D-Scan can pick up probes too so you can even see if someone is scanning nearby. You can set your angle to 5° and point it at a planet to determine if there’s a Tower at a moon there. You can then warp to the planet and start point 5° at moons to find the tower. See why I love it?

Using d-scan is all practice. One thing to bear in mind is that you can d-scan from the system map. It still goes off where your camera is pointing in relation to your ship. So if you probe down a 100% signature in system map, like we did earlier…

The site is directly in front of me in the system map. It’s also within 14.35AU so if I use a 5° scan I can see exactly what is in that site. Nothing, so no ships, wrecks or probes. D-Scan will never show NPCs or NPC structures.

Pointing at a planet gives different results.

This time I’m 5° on a planet without overview filters on, so it shows me all the moons and planets in line with my scan. If there was a Tower there, I’d see the tower, all the tower modules and even if there was a Forcefield (which indicates the tower is online). As a direct result I would also see any decloaked ships at the tower. Useful, no?

So how does this help us hunt? Well I’ve already explained a few ways. It can tell us what decloaked ships are nearby, where the towers are and if they are in a site. But what if I want to d-scan before probing a site? Easy.

You can probe and d-scan at the same time. Say you’ve spotted a Tengu on d-scan when you jumped into a wormhole. You have determined he is in empty space using d-scan – you have him at 30° away from any planets or moons.

Using the knowledge of where he is on the system map (or roughly) you now have a good place to use your first probe scan. Further narrowing down using d-scan first means there’s less chance of having to probe multiple times, meaning a better chance of catching the git!

That’s all there is to it. The rest is practice and logical deduction. Ships + Wrecks mean they’re killing NPCs, for example. As always cloaked ships do NOT show on d-scan. Keep your wits about you.

—

So that’s it for now. I may add (and adjust) bits of this post so keep an eye out. If you have any suggestions as to extra bits to add, or you spot some incorrect information since this post was 50% done when it all got changed in Odyssey, please let me know in a comment or EVE-Mail me at tgl3.

Part 4 will include Combat, active hunting, Sieging and offensive rolling of wormholes. Basically what we’ve covered already, but the PvP aspects of it.